Ectica and Nordic Bioscience collaborate to provide an innovative tool for compound screening, which will accelerate and enhance the success of drug development. Ectica will license and provide Nordic Bioscience access to its proprietary cell culture platform for pre-clinical drug discovery services in fibrosis.
Established in 2015 as a spin-off from the University (Hospital) Zurich and ETH Zurich, Ectica Technologies is a Swiss life science company specializing in the development and production of hydrogel-based in vitro and ex vivo human organotypic models. Ectica aims to contribute to pre-clinical research and drug discovery with advanced human models, enhancing the efficiency of the selection of anti-fibrotic and anti-cancer compounds and reducing the industry’s reliance on animal models.
Nordic Bioscience is a leading company in extracellular matrix (ECM) research and biomarker development. “We have always known that cells respond differently to different environments, and that their context determines their fate and behavior. But we all still use cells in plastic, and it is time to change this paradigm. In collaboration with Ectica, we can now measure ECM biomarkers secreted from human primary fibroblasts growing in a 3D network, which resemble the human tissue morphology more closely than cells grown on plastic. The synthetic hydrogel matrix allows us to measure exclusively the ECM produced by the fibroblasts, making this translational in vitro platform clinically relevant.” said Morten Karsdal, CEO of Nordic Biosciences.
Under this partnership, Extica Technologies will license and provide Nordic Bioscience access to its proprietary cell culture platform for pre-clinical drug discovery services in fibrosis at the certified Nordic Bioscience laboratory in Herlev, Denmark.
"Our partnership marks a key step in our journey to enhance drug discovery with more relevant human disease models. We've always been intrigued by how fibroblasts produce collagen in our synthetic hydrogels under a microscope, which is different from 2D plastic setups. The ability to analytically measure these processes with Nordic’s biomarkers opens the door for pharma and biotech companies to explore exciting questions about ECM turnover in fibrosis" said Benjamin Simona, Co-founder, and CEO of Ectica Technolgies.
(Press release / SK)
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